Bookends: The End Of The Ink and Paper Era
Amazon’s seemingly unshakable stranglehold on the eBook industry may have just met its match. According to a B&N Press Release offered up yesterday, the “nation’s largest bookseller” has launched the Barnes and Noble eBookstore. The new book store will enable “customers to buy eBooks and read them on a wide range of platforms including 
the iPhone and iPod touch (opens iTunes), BlackBerry smartphones, as well as most Windows and Mac computers. In addition, Barnes & Noble announced that it will be the exclusive eBook store on “the forthcoming and much anticipated Plastic Logic eReader device,” which will compete head-on with Amazon’d Kindle. Barnes and Noble will meet Amazon’s per book price of $9.99 as well as offer access to over 700,000 titles, “making it the world’s largest selection of eBooks available in one place.” B&N also revealed that it plans to expand that library to over 1 million titles.If you’re one to follow the B&N timeline of press releases, you might have already seen this coming. On March fifth of this year, B&N released the news of its acquisition of Fictionwise, a leader in the eBook marketplace. Furthermore, on the 24th of the same month, Fictionwise offered a free beta eReader for Blackberry smart-phones. Barnes & Noble’s Audiobook MP3 store launched on the 27th of April, which included the ability to transfer said songs to any device capable of playing the MP3 file format, including iPhone and iPod Touch. That all culminated when B&N added its book-finding application (click opens iTunes) to the App Store. Now, Barnes and Noble wants a share of the eBook market pie. And rightly so.
Barnes and Noble is a leading book retailer and all signs point to the decrease of print material, including books. With the advent of the smartphone came the ability to read documents on-the-go. Book publishers were a little slower to respond to the change. Whether they believed that books on smartphones and other mobile devices didn’t make for the best reading experience (since they are usually longer and more dense), or they wanted to milk their print media investments as much as possible, there is no looking back: the Kindle solved the problem of small text on a digital device. Now, the leading brick-and-mortar book retailer must make changes to cope with a changing marketplace.
But the bigger story here is that the collosal change of direction for one of the largest book sellers in the United States stems from the reality that our society is moving with all its might into a digital age, whether we like it or not. I will be the first to say that I don’t like the idea of digital books. I look at my computer screen enough in one day already – whether that be for work or pleasure. But having to access reading material on my computer screen (or another digital screen, for that matter) is not what I want to be doing as I read before falling asleep. (I’m sure my eyes would agree with me if only they could talk). But it’s not my decision. Having a physical book in my hands is not foreign to me. Yet if the digital copy is the only format available, it would no be ideal. It may depend on the person and the situation, but as long as I have been reading (and I am an avid reader) I have always preferred physical copies to digital copies. I can’t see myself downloading a novel and reading it off my computer screen and it being much fun.
As long as we are moving an era of digital books, we might as well do it right and make the consumer the real winner. This will happen as long as industry-wide competition is in full swing. Barnes and Noble has always had a good reputation and led the retail book industry by example. The new question is how well it will fare in a global, electronically-driven market? With the success of Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble certainly has a chance to take a good chunk of the eBook market. B&N’s strategy is to follow Amazon in its footsteps of delivering a dedicated eBook reader, but also to enable use-cases that Amazon has not yet served with the Kindle. For example, a Kindle user can not read a book on a Windows or a Mac computer, a user-case that B&N allows and supports wholeheartedly. Even if B&N is second to the eBook game, the company shows much promise in hosting a large selection of books and making a real dent in Amazon’s market share (if not exapanding the eBoook market in its entirety).
What do you think? Are you a fan of the digital book age? Will you embrace Barnes & Noble’s approach? Will you hang on to your Kindle? Were you waiting for some competition and are now going to enter the market for an eReader? Let us know in the comments!
Posted in Blogging, Business, Industry News, PR
21. July 2009 at 2:56 pm :
http://bit.ly/fgnbt
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21. July 2009 at 2:58 pm :
Market trends afoot: The End of The Ink and Paper Era http://bit.ly/Uircm
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
21. July 2009 at 8:03 pm :
Digitial books are retarded…. you can't beat a physical copy.
21. July 2009 at 3:05 pm :
An excellent article by @matthewlozano RT @TechNestReport: Market trends afoot: The End of The Ink and Paper Era http://bit.ly/Uircm
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
21. July 2009 at 8:20 pm :
Nice comment Ryan, lol. I like B&N's more complete approach. I will support almost anything I can pick up on my dedicated device, smartphone, Win/Mac computer, or internet browser at will and save my state inbetween. That's cool, and it's why cloud computing is so popular. Already, I can edit my contacts, calendar, documents etc on one machine and automatically distribute updates to my whole array of devices all awaiting my next move. If eBooks are to be successful I think they need to get on the this wave current technology.
Scenario:
Wake up in the morning and read a chapter in your current novel before you get out of bed on your fancy e-paper B&N device. Set it down and go to work. You get a break at work, open up your B&N reader app or access it through the web browser on your computer and pick up where you left off. Get up and go to lunch where you realize that reading a little more from your smartphone is better than the current lunchroom conversation, put it away and continue a similar cycle until the book is over.
With the current Kindle model, you would have to bring your Kindle or Kindle DX with you (until recently they opened up the iPhone to some content). The B&N approach adds that much more convenience to eBooks. I like that.
21. July 2009 at 8:21 pm :
Matt fells the same way! But I don't: I'm tired of lugging books around and am willing to take the trade off in having all my content on one device (iPhone or notebook and synchronizing that content to all my other devices).
Plus, if you're a student, carrying an ebook reader is much easier. Not to mention the potential cost savings to students!
21. July 2009 at 3:31 pm :
TechNest Report – Bookends: The End Of The Ink and Paper Era http://ow.ly/15Ip90
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21. July 2009 at 4:06 pm :
Bookends: The End Of The Ink and Paper Era http://bit.ly/vNZNM (via @technestreport) #marketing #ebook #print
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
21. July 2009 at 9:19 pm :
My preference is to read a hard copy book; however, because I need my information fast and furious at different times and places, the Kindle is what I believe will be the way to go…you can look up something quick and fast at your fingertips at any time. After all, aren't we in the information age?
This was an excellent blog as it got me thinking about the Kindle and how I can use it more efficiently.
Thanks for the help.
21. July 2009 at 11:06 pm :
Well no you won't be able to start out where you left off on another device unless B&N's device also has the Kindle's WhisperNet built in cell phone feature that updates the 'cloud'
I have both a Kindle and the Kindle 2 btw
Mel
22. July 2009 at 1:21 am :
Great article! I have to say, this debate is the same for me as listening to music. I love my iPhone, and the fact that I can carry around tons of songs, but when I need to sit back and unwind, nothing beats my record player. Same with books: I love being able to carry around an ebook reader, but it's kind of hard to cozy up to, you know?
31. July 2009 at 5:33 pm :
I see your point! I think that the ipod-record player analogy is a very good one and speak to the nature of our changing culture: people seem to be after quantity more often than quality. That said, I don't own a record player, nor have I ever touched one! Can you believe that? So I guess I haven't lived until I've done so.
Personally, I think we can achieve both – the convenience of having a digital device as well as the quality of an analogue medium – in the future. As our media devices will grow in memory, they will be able to store higher-quality content. As for ebooks, e-ink and related technologies will continue to improve and perhaps get to a point that it will be easier/better for our eyes to read a book on an e-reader. But the era of separate objects… it's going away for sure!